- Category: Discharged Without a Safe Plan — Hospital, Discharged Without a Safe Plan — Jail or Prison, Family Inclusion (HIPAA), Jail Instead of Hospital
- Tag(s): Anosognosia / Lack of Insight, Homelessness, Incarceration, Recovery with Treatment, Severe Deterioration
- Location(s): CA, San Diego
We will always provide support to help our son regain his life back. Our son’s history of severe mental illness went off meds and had multiple inpatient mental health admissions approximately 8 within 14-months’ time frame.
The inpatient mental health hospitalization was brief 3-10 day and no post hospital discharge aftercare. We learned of these hospital admissions from Telecare report several months later and the hospitals did not notify us of any for the admissions. We were putting in missing person’s reports.
Our son was considered gravely disabled; he was homeless for 4 months, had severe mental illness, lack of self-awareness, lack of insight into illness, and was unable to provide for his food, clothing, and shelter. The community behavioral health clinician was proactively working with our son for months. The center was engaging the psychiatric emergency response team (PERT) to attempt to facilitate hospital admission before our son went missing, based on being gravely disabled because of severe mental illness, homeless, and unable to formulate a plan of how he would obtain food, clothing, and shelter.
In addition, we were horrified when he was missing for 21 days January 23, 2024, to February 13, 2024, found in a thyroid coma and taken to hospital, responded to treatment after 7 days in ICU however in psychosis crisis (coming out of an emerging coma) and consequently acute inpatient care interrupted, taken from the hospital February 21, 2024 while on a 5250 (14-day hold) and taken and booked in custody San Diego Central jail. Our son was in custody for 18 months before transitioning to a Lanterman Petris (LPS) Conservatorship September 2025 for one year and now in a mental health treatment center.
*Each story is shared by someone impacted by untreated SMI, lightly edited for clarity, never for meaning.
THE ASK
The author’s message for legislators:
If I were to sit down with the Legislators, I believe that establishing criteria for law enforcement, medical professionals, advocates, and psychiatric emergency response team (PERT) when a person is in active psychosis will make a difference for our son and many others suffering from untreated severe mental illness.
It would be beneficial if the law emphasized that Rehabilitation and Recovery is possible from severe mental illness.
Seamless collaboration would be helpful to mental health court system, law enforcement, state mental health system and criminal justice system. Unfortunately, after a person is released from custody, most times there is no aftercare plan established.
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